This scene from Psycho (1960) is the revelation of Norman dressing up in his mother’s clothes to commit murder. This is linked heavily to the historical context of the film as the film was produced and based upon the time of Ed Gein, a sadistic and psychotic killer who murdered several women and dressed up in their clothes. He also dug up corpses and made clothes with their body parts and got some kind of horrible, sexual thrill from this process. This would have been very shocking and scary to the audience in 1960, as the tragic events of Ed Gein (from 1957) were still fresh in their minds. Also due to institutional context as the Hays Code censorship had only just become more relaxed so film makers were only just able to show these scenes of violence and sex. This is supported by Janet Staiger’s study on the audience, where she states that different audiences watch films with different concepts. This is called polysemy, and it explains how audiences found Psycho (1960) much more scary then now modern audience who are more desensitised to violence.
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